At Delhi's Jantar Mantar, various Hindutva groups organized events where calls for killing Muslims and Christians were made on February 5. Reports claim that disrespectful and violent comments about minority communities were also made in different stages.
On January 29, an umbrella body of several Hindu organizations held a protest rally against "Love Jihad" and religious conversions in Mumbai.
Many Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders attended the rally, including the Mumbai unit president Ashish Shelar, MP Manoj Kotak, MP Gopal Shetty, and the former MP Kirit Somaiya. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde was also seen participating in the rally with several Shiv Sena leaders.
After Pakistan blocked Wikipedia for three days over accusations of not removing allegedly blasphemous content, the online encyclopedia is up and running again.
On February 3, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that manages the popular crowd-sourced online directory, announced via Twitter that Pakistan’s Telecommunications Authority blocked Wikipedia and its other projects.
In light of the recent events involving the burning of the Quran by far-right activist Rasmus Paludan, a senior Malaysian official suggested criminalizing Islamophobia and demanded a “firmer” response from Muslim countries towards such incidents.
A week after far-right Danish-Swedish activist Rasmus Paludan burned the Quran in Sweden, which sparked outrage across the Muslim world, Swedish authorities have reportedly denied giving a Muslim man permission to burn the Torah in front of the Israeli embassy as a protest.
A Turkish woman’s parents and husband are now on trial for child and sexual abuse charges after she was forced to marry her husband when she was six years old, bringing attention to religious sects in the Muslim-majority country.
Turkey begins child abuse trial that puts spotlight on the country’s religious sects (from @AP) https://t.co/5EFUx1x8UN
New research published in the Journal of Religion and Health reveals that atheists and agnostics are just as healthy and satisfied with their lives as religious people, debunking the idea that religion and spirituality have a more positive effect on personal well-being.
After a series of attacks against Muslims in Canada, the Canadian government appointed the country’s first-ever Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia to fight rising anti-Muslim discrimination and hatred in the country.
A Turkish mufti (Muslim religious scholar) was under fire from Turkish Cypriots for suggesting that women should fulfill their duty to their husbands by accepting their “invitation to bed,” believing that his statement was a sign of imported encroachment of fundamentalist Islam in their secular community.
As the religious liberty organization Open Doors marks its 30th anniversary since it introduced the World Watch List compiling the 50 countries where Christians are persecuted the most, many Christians in several countries face more persecution than ever.
